Religion & Philosophy

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Polity, reprint, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 503 pages. In his major investigation into the nature of humans, Peter Sloterdijk presents a critique of myth - the myth of the return of religion. For it is not religion that is returning; rather, there is something else quite profound that is taking on increasing significance in the present: the human as a practising, training being, one that creates itself through exercises and thereby transcends itself. Rainer Maria Rilke formulated the drive towards such self-training in the early twentieth century in the imperative 'You must change your life'.In making his case for the expansion of the practice zone for individuals and for society as a whole, Sloterdijk develops a fundamental and fundamentally new anthropology. The core of his science of the human being is an insight into the self-formation of all things human. The activity of both individuals and collectives constantly comes back to affect them: work affects the worker, communication the communicator, feelings the feeler. It is those humans who engage expressly in practice that embody this mode of existence most clearly: farmers, workers, warriors, writers, yogis, rhetoricians, musicians or models. By examining their training plans and peak performances, this book offers a panorama of exercises that are necessary to be, and remain, a human being. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, AMS Press, reprint, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 412 pages. Volume I only (of 3 volumes). A reprint of the Oxford edition of 1838. Name and pencil notations on front fly leaf on front fly leaf and approx. 12 pages. Otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press , 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 163 pages. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. We subject others and are ourselves subjected to risk all the time - risk permeates life. Despite the ubiquity of risk and its imposition, philosophers and legal scholars have devoted little of their attention to the difficult questions stimulated by the pervasiveness of risk. When we impose risk upon others, what is it that we are doing? What is risking's moral significance? What moral standards govern the imposition of risk? And how should the law respond to it? This book highlights these important but neglected questions and offers novel answers to them in a systematic way, constructing a normative framework of risk imposition that draws upon a wide range of insights from diverse sources within philosophy and legal theory. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 261 pages. Many reasons can be given for the rise of Christianity in late antiquity and its flourishing in the medieval world. In asking how Christianity succeeded in becoming the dominant ideology in the unpromising circumstances of the Roman Empire, Averil Cameron turns to the development of Christian discourse over the first to sixth centuries A.D., investigating the discourse's essential characteristics, its effects on existing forms of communication, and its eventual preeminence. Scholars of late antiquity and general readers interested in this crucial historical period will be intrigued by her exploration of these influential changes in modes of communication. The emphasis that Christians placed on language-writing, talking, and preaching-made possible the formation of a powerful and indeed a totalizing discourse, argues the author. Christian discourse was sufficiently flexible to be used as a public and political instrument, yet at the same time to be used to express private feelings and emotion. Embracing the two opposing poles of logic and mystery, it contributed powerfully to the gradual acceptance of Christianity and the faith's transformation from the enthusiasm of a small sect to an institutionalized world religion. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Polity, reprint, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 231 pages. Few philosophers have left a legacy like that of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He has been credited not only with inventing the differential calculus, but also with anticipating the basic ideas of modern logic, information science, and fractal geometry. He made important contributions to such diverse fields as jurisprudence, geology and etymology, while sketching designs for calculating machines, wind pumps, and submarines. But the common presentation of his philosophy as a kind of unworldly idealism is at odds with all this bustling practical activity. In this book Richard. T. W. Arthur offers a fresh reading of Leibniz's philosophy, clearly situating it in its scientific, political and theological contexts. He argues that Leibniz aimed to provide an improved foundation for the mechanical philosophy based on a new kind of universal language. His contributions to natural philosophy are an integral part of this programme, which his metaphysics, dynamics and organic philosophy were designed to support. Rather than denying that substances really exist in space and time, as the idealist reading proposes, Leibniz sought to provide a deeper understanding of substance and body, and a correct understanding of space as an order of situations and time as an order of successive things. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 931 pages. Greek glossary, English glossary, bibliography of Principal editions of secondary sources. Octavo. Glossy burgunday soft covers with gold and white titles. Covers have minimal shelf wear, a small bump at top left front, interior clean and fresh, a few pages have very slight sign of storage bend at the top corner, otherwise very good. Heavy for international shipping. The Enneads is a work central to the history of philosophy in late antiquity. This volume is the first complete edition in English for 75 years and also includes Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. Led by Gerson, a team of experts present up to date translations which are based on the best available text, the editio minor of Henry and Schwyzer and its corrections.... They also offer extensive annotation to assist the reader, together with cross-references and citations. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st thus, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 376 pages. Translated from the French by Elborg Forster, edited and Introduction by Orest Ranum. A new translation of the 1681 work of theology and philosophy by Roman Catholic bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 482 pages. This is the first comprehensive study of Gangraena, an intemperate anti-sectarian polemic written by a London Presbyterian Thomas Edwards and published in three parts in 1646. These books, which bitterly opposed any moves to religious toleration, were the most notorious and widely debated texts in a Revolution in which print was crucial to political moblization. They have been equally important to later scholars who have continued the lively debate over the value of Gangraena as a source for the ideas and movements its author condemned. This study includes a thorough assessment of the usefulness of Edwards' work as a historical source, but goes beyond this to provide a wide-ranging discussion of the importance of Gangraena in its own right as a lively work of propaganda, crucial to Presbyterian campaigning in the mid-1640s. Name, date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 222 pages. Presents a nice and very readable exposition of Aristotle's work on logic. It can even be considered as a completion of the Organon, with a very sharp critical aparatus. Lukasiewicz worked all his life on Aristotle's syllogistic and this book, whose second edition was published shortly after his death, can be considered as a summary of his long time thinkings about that. Even if Lukasiewicz did not publish anything else, he would enter history because of this book. A note about editions: the second edition has enlarged the first with the addition of three chapters on the modal logic of Aristotle, so it differs from the first.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spine and front cover, 397 pages. The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 249 pages. Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science. Name and date on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Octagon Books, reprint, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt stamping, 224 pages. First published in 1933. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise bright and clean.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 211 pages. By treating the history of moral concepts as geological strata, Rosenthal discovered the archaeological method long before it became fashionable. The appeal of this book - in addition to its wryly delightful style - is to those for whom Hobbes and Spinoza's thoughts are themselves part of a continuing and unavoidable meditation on unavoidable questions.This is philosophy as an essentially moral, frustratingly human enterprise. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. DeKalb IL, Northern Illinois University Press, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 554 pages. Text in Italian, English and French. Clean, like-new copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Softcover, pages 423-902. Volume 2 ONLY of a three volume set of the classical articles and reviews of A. E. Housman. These papers were originally published between 1897 and 1914 in a variety of academic journals, many of which are now difficult to obtain. The editors have checked and, where necessary, supplemented and updated all the references and corrected errors in them, but have otherwise presented each paper, in full, with the minimum of editorial comment.

Hardcover. Geneva, Labor et Fides, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Epitre aux Romains. Texte etabli par Jules-Marcel Nicole avec la collaboration de Pierre Marcel et de Michel Reveillaud. Edition nouvelle publiee par la Societe Calviniste de France. Hardcover, gold cloth stamped in gilt, 380 pages. FRENCH TEXT. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 535 pages. This work contains Shaftesbury's philosophical notebooks from 1698 to 1712. It includes reflections on such topics as the natural affections, good and evil, God, self, the passions, pleasure and pain, nature, life, and philosophy, as well as a brief Life of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, by his son. A reprint of the 1900 edition. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 196 pages plus a 98 page addition: A Dissertation Upon the Argument a Priori For Proving the Existence of a First Cause. A facsimile reprint of the 1734 Edition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, John Bennett, reprint, 1832, Book: Very Good, 366 pages photocopied from the 1832 Seventh Edition, xeroxed two leafs per page with the reverse side blank. Bound in oblong black cloth covers. Volume 1 only (of 2).

Hardcover. UK, Imprint Academic, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 208 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. This book examines Oakeshott's political philosophy within the context of his more general conception of philosophical understanding. The book stresses the underlying continuity of his major writings on the subject and takes seriously the implications of understanding the world in terms of modality. The book suggests strongly that Oakeshott's philosophy of political activity cannot be reduced to a branch of conservatism, liberalism, or postmodernism or a theory or set of doctrines which fit neatly into any conventional school, like that of Idealism or Skepticism. Rather, Oakeshott's philosophy of political activity is a provocation to all of the currently dominant schools of political theory and political practice. It questions their presuppositions and exposes as ambiguous, arbitrary, or confused all of the supposed certainties which they take for granted. It does all this by offering profound insights into the character and limits of both political activity and political theory in the modern world.

Softcover. Boston, Beacon Press, Reprint, 1971, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 212 pages. Softcover. Light pencil marking to a few pages. Overall clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Brattleboro VT, Joseph Steen & Co, reprint, 1851, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, All leather bound, with illustrations, a critical introduction, sermons and essay, and historical index. Gilt border on covers and title on spine with all edges marbled. Bound upside down, cover worn with wear and rub, two rough worn down patches on cover, otherwise, internally clean and tight.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st Edition, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 381 pages. Hardcover. Deep red cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover board, label (price tag?) residue to bottom right corner of back cover board. B/w illustrations. Clean copy.

NY, Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1st Thus, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 137 pages, 12 color plates by Dean Cornwell. Color illustrated frontispiece. Prelim pages with light foxing. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Soil and light edgewear to covers. Plates clean and bright.

Hardcover. NY/London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 350 pages. The essays in Intention and Identity explore themes in Finnis' work touched on only lightly, if at all, in Natural Law and Natural Rights, developing profound accounts of personal identity and existence; group identity and common good; and intention and choice as action- and self-shaping. In his many-faceted study of what it is to be a human person, and a human community, Finnis not only engages with contemporary philosophers and bioethicists such as Peter Singer, Michael Lockwood and John Harris, with thinkers from other traditions such as Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), and with judges in the highest courts. He also offers illuminating and deeply considered readings of Shakespeare and Aquinas, and debates with Roger Scruton, Joseph Raz, Hans Kelsen, John Rawls, Glanville Williams, Richard Posner, Ronald Dworkin and others. The role of intention in the criminal law and the law of civil wrongs is searchingly explored through case-law, as are judicial attempts to understand conditional and preparatory intentions. Moral or bioethical issues discussed include in vitro fertilization, cloning, abortion, euthanasia, and 'brain death', patriotism, multi-culturalism andimmigration.

Hardcover. London, Viking, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A dark comedy recreates the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus from Cain's point of view, depicting a capricious God who resents Eve's flirting with an angel, an envious and sullen Adam, and Abel, Cain's irreconcilable opposite. Clean copy.

Softcover. Washington DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 178 pages, original printed wraps. VG, light wear to edges of covers. INSCRIBED BY 0'MALLEY on front fly leaf.

Hardcover. London, The Folio Society, 4th pr., 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Ornamented with wood cuts from designs of Albert Durer, Hans Holbein, and others. In imitation of Queen Elizabeth's Book of Christian Prayers. Foreword by Sir Patrick Cormack. Quarter bound in green leather with gilt design over marbled paper, gilded head, green stained edges, frontispiece, place ribbon, green slipcase with gilt design. Facsimile of the 1853 edition by William Pickering and Charles Whittingham the Younger. A pristine copy with slipcase.

Softcover. Burlington VY, Ashgate Publishing , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 241 pages.The theology of Irenaeus, and the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching in particular, is pivotal in showing the way in which the fathers of the church interpreted scripture and distilled doctrine. The Demonstration is an important hinge showing how the doctrine of the fourth century with its definitive councils and definitions of faith, opens out from the new testament apostolic and evangelical witness. Presenting the full translation of the Demonstration of Irenaeus by Dean Armitage Robinson, this book offers a detailed theological commentary by Canon Iain MacKenzie on this foundational doctrinal text. MacKenzie sets out the main theological themes throughout Irenaeus' work, and explores his method of systematic theology, Athanasius's dependence on Irenaeus, and Irenaeus' influence on doctrine in the fourth century - particularly the works of Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. Highlighting the importance of this second century theologian for theology today, this commentary and theological interpretation offers an incentive to study Irenaeus in the wider development of Christian doctrine as a cardinal figure in the appreciation of systematic theology. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Munchen/Leipzig, K.G. Saur, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with light gray stamping, 269 pages. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1st thus, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Facsimile reprints of the two works (1696 and 1697). Introduction by John Valdimir Price. Approx, 430 pages, light pencil markings to about 20 pages. Otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 239 pages. This book tells for the first time the long and complex story of the involvement of Locke's suggestion that God could add to matter the power of thought in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the growth of French materialism. There is a discussion of the 'affaire de Prades', in which Locke's name was linked with a censored thesis at the Faculty of Theology in Paris. The similarities and differences between English "thinking matter" and the French "mati`ere pensante" of the philosophes are also discussed. Name o front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Netherlands, Springer, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 289 pages. This collection of new essays on John Locke by a constellation of leading Locke scholars focuses on his philosophy, biography, sources and influence. The topics discussed here include his theory of ideas, his debt to Stoicism, his relations the Dry Club and with his translator, Pierre Coste, and the hitherto overlooked critique by Thomas Beconsall. A major emphasis of the collection is the relationship between Locke and seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes, Hobbes, Cudworth, Bayle, Malebranche and Leibniz. The coverage of Locke's legacy extends to into the eighteenth-century legacy as far as Rousseau and Kant. Ink name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 347 pages. Light pencil notes on rear fly leaf, otherwise clean, tight copy. Volume 1 only of a two volume set.

Hardcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1st, 1983, Hardcover, maroon cloth stamped in gilt, 238 pages. This book, a reevaluation of a major issue in modern philosophy, explores the controversy that grew out of John Locke's suggestion, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), that God could give to matter the power of thought. The concept of "thinking matter," as Locke's notion came to be described, offered a threat to those who held orthodox beliefs, especially to their views on the nature and immortality of the soul. In Thinking Matter,John Yolton traces this controversy from theologian Ralph Cudworth's 1678 manifesto, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Wherein, All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted; and Its Impossibility Demonstrated -- an attack on ancient versions of naturalism--down to the philosophical and scientific studies of Joseph Priestley in the late eighteenth century. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 216 pages. This remarkable expression of republican thought has never before been published. Algernon Sidney was among the most unrelenting republican partisans of the seventeenth century, and was executed for his opposition to Charles II. Written during Sidney's continental exile, the vivid Court Maxims was only recently rediscovered. The work presents a lively discussion about the principles of government and the practice of politics, articulating a vital tradition of republicanism in an absolutist age.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press , 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering and design to spine and front cover. The writings of Richard Hooker are of central interest to those studying English Renaissance thought and literature. In this, the third volume of a much-needed critical edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, are the posthumous books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker planned the Laws in eight books, but he died shortly after publication of Book Five. Books Six, Seven, and Eight, which contain his analysis of jurisdiction, episcopacy, and the royal supremacy, are here transcribed from versions that have the most authority. The volume also includes Hooker's autograph notes toward those texts (brought to light by P. G. Stanwood in the course of his research) and the contemporary notes by George Cranmer and Edwin Sandys on a lost draft of Book Six. Mr. Stanwood's introduction lays to rest all doubts about the authenticity of the last three books as we have them, doubts current since publication of Walton's Life of Hooker in 1662.Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. God in the Age of Science? is a critical examination of strategies for the philosophical defence of religious belief. The main options may be presented as the end nodes of a decision tree for religious believers. The faithful can interpret a creedal statement (e.g. "God exists") either as a truth claim, or otherwise. If it is a truth claim, they can either be warranted to endorse it without evidence, or not. Finally, if evidence is needed, should its evidential support be assessed by the same logical criteria that we use in evaluating evidence in science, or not? Each of these options has been defended by prominent analytic philosophers of religion. In part I Herman Philipse assesses these options and argues that the most promising for believers who want to be justified in accepting their creed in our scientific age is the Bayesian cumulative case strategy developed by Richard Swinburne. Parts II and III are devoted to an in-depth analysis of this case for theism. Using a "strategy of subsidiary arguments," Philipse concludes (1) that theism cannot be stated meaningfully; (2) that if theism were meaningful, it would have no predictive power concerning existing evidence, so that Bayesian arguments cannot get started; and (3) that if the Bayesian cumulative case strategy did work, one should conclude that atheism is more probable than theism. Philipse provides a careful, rigorous, and original critique of theism in the world today. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 346 pages. Dr. Notomi presents a new interpretation of one of Plato's most important dialogues, the Sophist, addressing both historical context and philosophical content. He shows how important the issues concerning the sophist (professional teacher and rhetorician in ancient Greece) are to the possibility of philosophy. His new approach to the whole dialogue reveals that Plato struggles with difficult philosophical issues in a single line of inquiry; and that Plato shows, in defining the sophist, his conception of the authentic philosopher. Name, date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 268 pages. A facsimile reprint of the 1690 edition. One of 9 volumes in More's collected works. Name on front fly leaf otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Marquette University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 429 pages. Spanish Jesuit philosopher and theologian Suarez (1548-1617) commented on Aristotle's work by asking and answering a series of questions that it raises. Doyle (Saint Louis U.) translates Suarez's preface to the 1597 edition, his introduction, the Index of questions through the 12 books, and an index of the disputations. He also includes corresponding Latin texts and an index of people mentioned. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Longmans Green and Co., 1st, 1926, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth with gilt title on spine. 702 pages. Front hinge cracked, re-enforced with tape. Light shelf-wear, otherwise sound and clean.

Hardcover. Edinburgh, T and T Clark, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 342 pages. Jewish-Christian contact and controversy were central to early Christian experience. An understanding of this contact and controversy and its continuation over the centuries is also central to any true understanding of the history of Christianity and of the history of Judaism. The twelve chapters of this book deal especially with the interconnected subjects of polemic and biblical interpretation. Nine are concerned with the ancient world, beginning with post-exilic Jewish writing and the New Testament and going on to later pagan, Jewish and Christian controversies. Three concentrate on medieval and early modern Jewish controversies. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, T&T Clark, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 331 pages, INSCRIBED BU AUTHOR on the half-title page. Analyses the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on natural philosophy in a series of contexts within which they may best be explored and understood. Its aim is to place Edwards's writings on natural philosophy in the broad historical, theological and scientific context of a wide variety of religious responses to the rise of modern science in the early modern period - John Donne's reaction to the new astronomical philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, as well as to Francis Bacon's new natural philosophy; Blaise Pascal's response to Descartes' mechanical philosophy; the reactions to Newtonian science and finally Jonathan Edwards's response to the scientific culture and imagination of his time. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 326 pages. Lucretius' didactic masterpiece De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) is one of the most brilliant and powerful poems in the Latin language, a passionate attempt at dispelling humanity's fear of death and its enslavement by false beliefs about the gods, and a detailed exposition of Epicurean atomist physics. For centuries, it has raised the question of whether it is primarily a poem or primarily a philosophical treatise, which also presents scientific doctrine. The current volume seeks to unite the three disciplinary aspects -- poetry, philosophy, and science -- in order to offer a holistic response to an important monument in cultural history. With ten original essays and an analytical introduction, the volume aims not only to combine different approaches within single covers, but to offer responses to the poem by experts from all three scholarly backgrounds. Philosophers and scholars of ancient science look closely at the artistic placement of individual words, while literary critics explore ethical matters and the contribution of Lucretius' poetry to the argument of the poem. Topics covered include death and grief, evolution and the cosmos, ethics and politics, perception, and epistemology.Name and date on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to about 25 pages.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 759 pages, b&w illustrations. A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman EmpireJesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Clean copy.

Softcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, Revised Ed., 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 312 pages. This book investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent, to say that there is a God. The author concludes that, despite philosophical objections, the claims which religious believers make about God are generally coherent; and that although some important claims are coherent only if the words by which they are expressed are being used in stretched or analogical senses, this is in fact the way in which theologians have usually claimed they are being used. This revised edition includes various minor corrections and clarifications. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Lincoln NE, Bison Books, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 324 pages. "Among the heretics of every age, we find men who are filled with the highest kind of religious feeling," Albert Einstein said. He might have been referring to the sixteenth-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was tried by two Inquisitions and burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. Bruno's most representative work, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), published in an atmosphere of secrecy in 1584 and never referred to as anything but blasphemous for more than a century, was singled out by the church tribunal at the summation of his final trial. That is hardly surprising because the book is a daring indictment of the corruption of the social and religious institutions of his day. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Ottawa CAN, Dovehouse Editions, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped with gilt lettering on spine and decoration to front cover. 379 pages. Originally written in 1645 by the author who was also known as Lord Herbert of Chirbury. Herbert's major work is the De veritate, prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso](On Truth, as It Is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False). He published it on the advice of Grotius. In the De veritate Herbert produced the first purely metaphysical treatise, written by an Englishman. Herbert's real claim to fame is as the father of English Deism. The common notions of religion are the famous five articles, which became the charter of the English deists. Name, light pencil notations to front endpaper and about a dozen pages.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 249 pages. Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), his first substantial publication, revolutionized the theory of vision. His approach provided the framework for subsequent work in the psychology of vision and remains influential to this day. Among philosophers, however, the New Theory has not always been read as a landmark in the history of scientific thought, but instead as a halfway house to Berkeley's later metaphysics. In this book, Margaret Atherton seeks to redress the balance through a commentary on and a reinterpretation of Berkeley's New Theory. Clean copy.